Claudia's Blog

Latest Entries

How many of us have experienced losing love for our parents? We start life off with a big open heart, ready to love those two people who brought us into the world. As the years go by, we find ourselves more and more disenchanted with them. They do many things which disenchant us. They do… Read the full article

All day today it has been raining. What did I do? I did not read a book or watch television. I did not sew or paint. I went outside and planted. I planted lupine and Echinacea and I created a circular design in my front yard with pieces of brick. I got wet and muddy…. Read the full article

One of the hardest things in life is staying true to oneself. So much of our early training teaches us to be good, to not demand, not want, not complain, not say our true feelings. Some of this is, of course, good. It helps us to be cooperative, tuned in to others and not overly… Read the full article

At a graduation this past May, I heard a remarkable talk on friendship. The person who spoke was in his mid-fifties. He had lost a close friend and colleague earlier in the year. Rather than talk about politics or the future, which is common for graduation speeches, he talked about a lifelong friendship. He began… Read the full article

Donald Winnicott describes the “true self as a sense of self based on spontaneous authentic experience, and a feeling of being alive, of having a real self.” Wouldn’t we all like to feel that clear and connected to ourselves?? Wouldn’t we like to shed the pain of the past and live in the present with… Read the full article

It seems like the societal message has been… dads aren’t that important. There are lots of movies and television shows which make jokes about the father in the family, showing him as incompetent or silly or stupid. But, from what I hear in my therapist’s chair, this is the opposite of the truth. Dads are… Read the full article

Over the weekend, while I was visiting friends in Georgia, I observed the training of a four month old boy. He is loved, loved, loved by his parents. But they have certain ideas about what a child should or shouldn’t do, most of which I don’t agree with. The first idea is that a child… Read the full article

The world has become a scary place and yet it is still so great to be alive. With singers like Ariana Grande singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, there is hope. There is also sadness. Why does it need to be “Somewhere Over the Rainbow?” It seems to me that somewhere over the rainbow was close… Read the full article

For many people, and all the people I know, we are in a time of mourning. Our feelings of security, our hope in the future, and our confidence that life was moving in a good direction have all disappeared with the results of this election night. Now, we are all wondering, what do we do?… Read the full article

Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza…and New Year’s — How do we stay sane? Strategies: 1. Ask for help: This is probably one of the best ways to stay sane. You may have been raised with the idea that it is best to do everything yourself, that you are the best person to do it all, and, you have to… Read the full article